The Vaccine: Inside the Race to Conquer the COVID-19 Pandemic by Joe Miller & Özlem Türeci & Ugur Sahin

Author:Joe Miller & Özlem Türeci & Ugur Sahin [Miller, Joe & Türeci, Özlem & Sahin, Ugur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250280374
Google: OwMyEAAAQBAJ
Published: 2022-02-01T12:09:40.348348+00:00

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Meanwhile, Özlem, who had cofounded BioNTech with Uğur and Christoph Huber and helped in an informal capacity at every step, still held no official role at that company. Her unique talents were needed elsewhere, specifically at the trio’s first firm, Ganymed, which had reached a critical stage in the typical biotech’s life cycle. It would soon seek to prove its core concepts in a randomized human trial, comparing how its product performed against existing cancer treatments. Half of the original management team had moved on, with Uğur going to BioNTech, and as a result, it had been reduced to a two-person operation: Özlem—the only person with the necessary scientific and business expertise to get Ganymed over this line—was serving as chief executive and chief medical officer, supported by Dirk Sebastian, who had been at the start-up since its inception and took responsibility for the finances. Despite having too few hands on deck, Ganymed’s first Phase 2 study delivered more impressive results than Uğur and Özlem had ever dared to dream of. “It was a game changer because it validated us as clinical innovators,” says Özlem. In participants with a certain type of gastric cancer, the combination of standard chemotherapy and Ganymed’s new antibody treatment managed to both shrink tumors and prevent them from regrowing. The patients’ chances of survival nearly doubled.

This encouraging data catapulted Ganymed into the international limelight. The company was showcased prominently at ASCO, the world’s biggest cancer conference, and major news outlets, including Fortune magazine, asked why no one had heard of this “obscure biotech” with a potential “game-changing cancer med.” Several companies suddenly wanted to buy Ganymed, and an offer from Japan’s Astellas proved too good to pass up. In 2016, the Strüngmanns agreed to sell the business for $1.4 billion in Germany’s biggest biotech deal. In one fell swoop, the brothers’ investments in Uğur and Özlem’s start-ups had paid off. Handsomely.

The transaction proved bittersweet for Özlem. She had hoped to get the treatment to market via an accelerated approval path so that patients around the world might benefit from it while a Phase 3 trial was being conducted, rather than having to wait for its conclusion. Instead, she and her team went through an extensive handover process with Astellas, which ultimately decided to embark on its own large-scale global trials that, as of the end of 2021, remain ongoing.

Now that Ganymed had been sold, however, Özlem was free to join BioNTech’s board. With several deals on the horizon, the core investors wanted her to take on the role of chief medical officer, to shepherd the company’s many disparate technologies into the clinic. Reluctant to repeat her experience at Ganymed and “lose another baby,” Özlem hesitated. “After we sold Ganymed, I was very disappointed,” she says. “It seemed that conventional biotech business models and financing mechanisms were an obstacle to moving innovations to patients’ bedsides.”

Uğur, Helmut, Christoph Huber, and Thomas Strüngmann, among many others, did their best to persuade her otherwise. “This time, it will be different,” Uğur told her.

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